Irony has a name

This week has been a teensy bit surreal. Not sure where it came from, why it came, or how, but I wish it would go away. Because out of the blue, for no real reason, I'm suddenly missing London.

Yep, that's right. The weather in Melbourne turns nice, I get myself set up in a great flat, I pick up my new car tomorrow and I'm in a job that I actually quite like, with the prospect of some financial security looming, and suddenly I'm missing the grey, grim life that I led for the past 2 years. Go figure.

I first noticed it last Friday, after a night out with work people. Maybe it was because it was the first night out with them that I'd had, a night where nobody I knew was driving, where I stumbled home in the wee sma's, not having to sneak around fearful of waking anyone, or hoping that there was nobody deciding that I'd slept enough. Maybe it's down to the looming thesis deadline that's evoking memories of late nights in London, or perhaps it was the arrival of some London-related mail. I know I triggered it properly by downloading the latest episodes of Spooks, and reminiscing about all the times that I've run through the Bakerloo platforms at Charing Cross Station, just like Lucas et al were doing in the most recent, trying to pick where they were filming, and getting excited when I recognised it, just like I used to do with Australian films when homesickness started to bite back in London.

Or perhaps it's really all down to L's announcement that she is definitely coming back to Melbourne at the end of this year. It's truly the end of an era once she gets back. Sure, I've still got friends there, there are still people who I would visit if I was to go back. But she is the only one that I knew over there that I also knew here before I left. And when she comes back, it is almost certain to mean that I am here for good as well. And much as I'm loving being back in Melbourne - and don't get me wrong, I love this city like no other - I'm missing some of the freedom of being over there.

Over there I didn't get nightly phone calls from my mother. I didn't feel sit around doing nothing, because it's next to impossible to pin anyone down without booking them months in advance. I was out and about, doing things on whims without having to justify it to anybody. There is a freedom to living on the other side of the world to what you consider your real life, and I miss that. I miss the adventure of wandering a city that is older than my country, older than I can contemplate, where you turn the corner and suddenly you're looking at something that pre-dates not only your own country, but the one you're standing in as well. The twists and turns, the people.

I never thought I would come back here and wax lyrical about London. Maybe it's the realisation that I really can't move back there that has set me off. I don't think I would move back. But I would pick up huge chunks of it and move them here if I could. I think I understand what it was that made the colonialists attempt to reconstruct England in Australia, at least to a certain extent. I'm glad they did.

Actually, I think I know what has set me off. It's the realisation that both of my brothers are deserting the family Christmas, leaving me defenceless on Annual Family Fight Day. I can see their point; it's the first time I've been home for the festive season since 2008, so it's about time I shouldered some of the burden. It feels strange and slightly wrong to be once again contemplating a hot Christmas, let alone one at home but without half my family around.

It's frustrating to think of just how homesick I was before I made the decision to move back here, only to find that I'm missing London now. I had thought I was settled, but it seems I've been kidding myself, at least a little. I'm not really. It's nice to have a home, it's nice to be home, but damn I love to travel. Guess I'll just have to get down to planning another little adventure...

The Final Word

It's a grey Sunday in London, so it seems appropriate to get back onto my blog for one last time before moving on to greener pastures - well, lighter, brighter, warmer, with any luck. Because d-day - departure day, that is - looms large on the horizon, moving ever closer, and suddenly, I find that I only have a couple of days left as a Londoner. And it's a very strange feeling, let me tell you. I am currently homeless, unemployed, and whittling my possessions down to the smallest number I can bear. Somehow, I think I wouldn't survive as one of those people who are perpetually on the road, but by the standards of a pack rat like myself, the last three and a half years has been condensed to a scarily small pile of possessions.

The goodbyes have all been said, and I'm beginning to realise just how much I'm going to miss certain people when I'm no longer in the same country, continent, hemisphere. Because as much as I might bemoan the lack of possessions at the moment, the things that I'm also whittling down, like friends, acquaintances and flatmates, are the things that have meant the most.

I know. I don't normally go in for the touchy feely stuff. In fact, I normally run from it at a speed that people who have seen me exercise are astonished by. My hockey career could have been very different had I been able to put on such a turn of speed on the pitch (and if I had skills, but hey, that doesn't make such a nice image, does it...). But here I am, feeling the urge to get all gushy. Make the most of it, these moments don't come around too often, and I still can't manage to do it with any degree of sincerity and without resorting to cliches.

There are people I won't miss. The friend of a friend who came around this afternoon to buy my sewing machine, and spewed phoney declarations of a friendship we never had for the entire time she was here. The person who I saw for what we both knew would be the last time a couple of weeks back, who promptly went home after that night's drinks and unfriended me on Facebook. I also won't be missing London's air quality, the pavement pizzas to be found after pretty much every Saturday night, the men who turn all of the city into their own personal lavatory. I won't be coming back any time soon because of the lure of those things.

But there are people that I am going to miss, because they bring their own unique quality to a friendship. Jones, with her ability to bring bowel movements into pretty much any conversation. Chris, and her involved love life, the twists and turns of which are better than any novel yet published. L, the most motherly flatmate imaginable, with her tendency to voice every thought that enters her head, even if it's just a commentary on what she's doing at the time. C, sweet, giggly, and hilarious when tipsy. The core group of those who were out with me until 2am this morning, the chief causes of my husky voice when I eventually surfaced from a deep sleep today. They are the ones who have made living here, away from old friends and family, not only bearable, but enormously fun. And I will miss them. Drunken promises of catching up in Sydney for New Years Eve had better be followed through on...but just in case, I plan to annoy people on email until they come visit me, just to keep me quiet.

But that's the thing with leaving somewhere. My intentions are good, and so are those of the people staying behind. But the bittersweet truth is that, over time, there will undoubtedly be drifting apart. The number of people who keep in touch with will shrink. I think I know who will fall by the wayside, and who will last. But from here on in, the things that have come so easily while in London will require work. And I'm not known for my work ethic. So if you're one of the people I'm talking to, and you don't hear from me for a while, rest assured that I'm not ignoring you. I'm just distracted. I will get back to you at some point...just bear with me, that's all.

Meanwhile, off to America for me...Five weeks of Thelma and Louise style antics with L. Although hopefully without the murder or the messy ending. But I wouldn't mind if we ran into a Brad Pitt along the way...

Beware Pagans...

At last there is light. So much so that I’m tempted to put my sunglasses on when I’m at my desk for certain times of day. I’m at risk of being blinded. It has to be a health and safety issue. But I don’t really mind. Because, as long as I don’t venture outside, I can bask in the sun, stretching out my feet like a cat, and pretend that it’s almost summer, and I’m almost warm.

It looks like I’m not the only one with this kind of thinking. I’ve seen a few people tricked into wearing shorts, flippy skirts, bare legs and sandals. There’s a more sensible man leaning against a wall outside. It’s the end wall of a terrace, and he stand beneath a wall-mounted street light, head raised to the sun and looking like he’s about to indulge in a pagan ritual. He’s smart enough to do it whilst wearing a sheepskin jacket with a heavy beard to keep his face warm. Although now I think about it, judging by the amount of laundry he’s just picked up from the laundromat in his supermarket trolley, I’m wondering if that’s as much because he didn’t have enough clean clothes as anything else.

I do feel that I should brave the cold and offer him a warning though. The last man I saw leaning against that wall was facing the other way and searching for relief from things other than the cold. If the trickle he left running from the wall to the gutter was anything to go by, he wasn’t worshipping the sun. South London: workplace, temple and toilet, all rolled into one handy location. How convenient.

Nit Picking

I've been indulging in a little naval gazing lately, partly brought about by a dose of the flu, partly by the weather, which has made it so that I'm terrified to set foot outside the house for fear of falling on my arse, getting filmed doing it, and ending up on funniest home videos. That's led to a whole lot of examining why I'm so clumsy and why I'd rather sit inside and look at the pretty through the window than venture out and experience it first hand. Because it has been pretty. And I do love snow once I lever myself out of the chair and pull on every item of clothing I own - not just because it's cold, but also in a vain attempt to cushion as much of me as possible; given that I woke up this morning feeling like I'd managed to dislocate both hips in my sleep, I think it's a futile exercise.

But at least I think I've found the source of my inner klutz. It's a result of my innate laziness. The incident where I tripped and ploughed headfirst into the side of a train? Was because I'm too lazy ti lift my feet properly after the first hundred metres of sprinting. Being falling-down-sober in the casino and ending up with a seriously sprained ankle and a trip out of the service entrance in a wheel chair? Because I was too lazy to pay attention to just how many stairs there were. The ball flying off my own hockey stick and into my face? Product of a half-arsed attempt to tackle someone in a training drill. Doing the splits getting off a bus in Tallinn Christmas before last? Because I was too lazy to use muscles properly to step down slowly and just went flop - in more ways than I'd expected as it turned out. And my current inability to walk down the icy footpaths now that London has officially stopped gritting any non-major roads? That would be my failure to develop the stomach muscles necessary for balance.

Given half a chance, I could easily become one of those hermits who crops up in kids movies, the one who has the messy, rundown house but is never seen. The scary neighbour who, like Boo Radley, the only reason you know they're still in there is because you haven't seen someone carry them out yet. And the inevitable consequence for me of living like that would be the way they'd eventually have to get me out of the house; it would also be like something off the TV, only it would be the shows where they have to remove the wall of the house and use a crane to lower out the lard ball trapped within. My laziness is accompanied by a deep and abiding love of all things bad for me. Television, books, writing, hell, even sewing. So many things that can keep me occupied for days, weeks, months, without needing to step beyond the bounds of the living room, the kitchen, my bedroom. As long as there is something for my mind to do, I could be content. Strangely, my mind has never been lazy. It's always been rather active, in fact, mostly in search of reasons for me not to be up and moving. I guess something had to move, just to prove that I was alive.

But it turns out that I've always been lazy, right from the very beginning. When I was still rolling around on the floor, refusing to even sit under my own steam at an age when most kids were walking, I was taken to the doctor for fear that there was something seriously wrong with me. And it turned out there was. I have been medically diagnosed as stubbornly lazy. When propped on cushions, I would dig my heels in until I was once again lying on my back. I learnt to talk incredibly early so that I could order my brothers to bring me anything I wanted. I'm fairly certain that this early show of determined sloth had resulted in the lack of stomach muscle definition I am blaming for my appalling balance. My suspicions weren't contradicted by last weekend's phone call to my parents.

I seem to have been a topic of general conversation in Melbourne, where they have been wondering how I cope with the cold (refer above for the answer: I don't. I make an environment where it isn't cold and I stubbornly refuse to acknowledge any alternative). There have been news reports of people falling and breaking bones. Mum is justifiably convinced that I'm going to join the ranks of these people. Given my track record, I can understand the concern. She was trying to make sure that I had the right shoes on when I went outside, but I promised her I hadn't left the house without wearing hiking boots since Christmas, that it wasn't that I didn't have the right shoes, but rather that I didn't have the right balance. Mum's response was typical, fast and to the point.

'Yes, you were never very good at rollerskating, either, were you.'

Confirmation from an unexpected source - when your mother doesn't defend your abilities, you've really got no hope, and besides, how many other people went rollerblading and ended up getting stuck on tramlines? I was a truly terrible skater - I've cringed every time I set foot outside this week until the overnight rains washed away the last of the snow and ice. If they hadn't, I might have been forced to dig my heels in once more, but this time to avoid being flat on my back. One of these days, I'll just give up and stay inside. And on that day, you can call me Boo.

Feeling for Snow

It's been snowing in London. It's been bitterly cold with it. I've been lucky, in some respects, because a dose of the flu has kept me at home - although L believes that I shouldn't have stayed home when my sinuses felt like golf balls were lodged underneath my eyes, but should rather have gone to work and saved my sick leave for something more serious; I'm guessing she expects me to have an accident bad enough to require amputation one of these days. But it has meant that I haven't been forced to venture out since the snow started falling, which in my world can only be a good thing. I'm well enough this morning to have to go out though, and I'm not looking forward to it. Because last night, listening to the cars on the street skidding into each other at low speeds - or in the case of one unfortunate ambulance, higher speeds, it occurred to me that there are things you don't know about snow if your only contact with it while you're growing up comes through the television. So here is my later life list of lessons about snow.

First up, while it's falling, it's basically rain. In movies, it always looks so pretty, giving everything a nice white dusting. And when you're watching it falling through a window, the prettiness holds. When you're caught out in it without an umbrella, on the other hand, you will come in looking like a drowned rat. Just a little colder than the usual and in some cases, a drowned rat with dandruff until the flakes finish melting.

Snow makes sounds while it's falling, but also somehow seems to deaden some sounds at the same time as it makes others travel further. The soft rushing noise of it's falling always alerts me to the need to look out the window. If it's falling to softly for the noise to reach me, the absence of other sounds at home let me know that there's something going on. The traffic noise seems to disappear into the mush. But at work, it's the ability to hear the bells of the church near the tube. On normal days, they can't be heard over the noise of traffic. On snow days, it's like being next door to the steeple.

Walking through fresh snow also makes a lovely crunching noise as your boots break the surface tension. It's a crisp sound, lovely to hear the first time, until you realise that everybody who's out to make that sound is really just compressing the snow. It's then that you learn that your life in a sunny climate has in no way equipped you for life in a cold one. You can't skate, you can't ski, and you damned sure can't walk on the skating rink that snowy footpaths become as more and more people flatten the snow into ice. Because crushed snow, the kind that you find on footpaths, for example, is not the pretty crunchy stuff that fresh snow is. It is hard packed ice that the inexperienced have to shuffle along, like the cars on the road with wheels spinning but no traction. Until the men with their shovels and grit make it to work and start clearing safe pathways, footpaths become dangerous territory. And there's no escape.

For all that, though, it is really beautiful. The novelty of seeing London covered in a soft snowy blanket makes up for the days of stomach clenching misery that follow as I negotiate my way to work.

Ooh, work...damn, late again. Oh well. The other thing about snow: it makes a convenient excuse for tardiness.

Well good, innit

For a city that experiences such vile weather, London is seriously poorly equipped to handle it. Tonight, the rain has come down in sheets, the kind that you wrestle to get into the washing machine and then discover that you don't have enough space to dry them once they're done. Much the same way that the gutters, downpipes, awnings, footpaths and roads can't get rid of the sheer volume of water that has built up in them.

As I dodged the deepest puddles and clung to the furthest point from the cars on the road, which were carelessly offering a free shower to any pedestrians foolish enough to stray near the edge, I wondered why it was, exactly, that I'd decided against "borrowing" one of the golf umbrellas leaning nonchalantly by the desk of the office klepto. Especially given that he wasn't even in the office to keep me by his desk with an entertaining (i.e. nauseating) sound and light display, a combination of his poor eating habits (he's yet to close his mouth once during a meal and offers a comprehensive range of chomping, slurping and gulping noises) and semi-pornographic comic book style illustrations he's done and pinned around his desk, giving it the look of teenage-boy-meets-Hyde-Park-flasher.

As a case study of a Londoner, he's an interesting specimen. He sounds like someone who just stepped off the set of a Guy Ritchie film and would probably lay claim to knowing some of the genuine geezer-types Ritchie loves to bring to life on the screen. He is a proud son of East London, speaks with the classic inflections and drops "innit" onto the end of every second sentence. He turns up to work wearing silky tracksuit pants which announce his arrival long before he appears, the psht-psht noise acting more effectively than an air raid siren to clear whatever space he is approaching. Because once you get trapped by him, there is no escape. Snoopy, as one former colleague dubbed him, knows all the goings on in the office and has few greater pleasures than sharing them with victims - er, an audience. That his stories aren't always true is irrelevant to him. It wasn't so irrelevant to the person who got back from leave last year to find an inbox full of condolences about being made redundant; he hadn't been, but the panic attack almost made him go to the directors and resign instead.

When he's not discussing what may or may not be going on at work, he tells detailed stories about his home life. Mind you, none of us actually know the names of his wife and daughter, even if we do know an infinite number of other details. He always just describes them as "mar wahfe" or "m'dor-er". Read them out loud, it will help you figure it out. Dor-er is about 6, an intelligent pretty little girl who in no way takes after her father; I figure she'll outgrow him by age 10. Wahfe is a quiet Vietnamese woman, arguably married by mail order (or sold into slavery, depending on which version you listen to), who works hard keeping her family together. the only time she has ever been known to speak up was when Snoopy appeared to be straying with Screechy, the man-eating, drug addled office psychopath. Wahfe cornered Screechy and warned her in no uncertain terms to keep away from Snoopy. Unfortunately, the person she should have been talking to was her husband. Not that he would have listened to her, women being, in his mind at least, there for cooking, cleaning and serving.

The time he's been happiest was during and of the redundancy periods. He would loiter by the stairs going into the boardroom, where the meetings were held with the unfortunate ones, and then race to email the latest name around the office. The behaviour was enough to get him a warning from the board, but somehow he's clung to his job. We're all wondering what dirt he has on them, because so many people were let got when he stayed. Of course, the new streamlined office has given him fewer places to hide. Where once the only place you wouldn't find him was at his desk, now he has no excuse for wandering; there's nobody left for him to visit.

This is the man I now sit next to. I think I'll ask if I can go back to being a leper in the back room. The company was better out there.

Dial M for...

I was away from my desk when my mobile rang. I didn't hear it - nobody would, since it's switched to silent during work hours. The only sign of any activity, when I got back to my desk - was the flashing light at the centre of the keypad and a little arrow showing on the screen. There's something about a missed call. Until the caller details come up on the screen, it could be anybody. It's a frisson of excitement in an otherwise mundane and boring day. But not today. Today, the caller details simply say 'Private'. There is no symbol in the top right of the screen to suggest that they, whoever they may have been, left a message. Excitement turns quickly to frustration, annoyance.

Why call at all, if they will not leave a message?

I assume it is a friend whose office number always comes up as private, then go back to work as I wait for a reply to my email asking what she wanted. But when it comes half an hour later, 30 minutes of distraction and futile attempts to keep working, to not pick up my phone and play with the buttons in hopes of finding out who it was, it is a denial; she didn't call me.

I log into various webmail accounts, hoping against hope that whoever it was has simply decided to email me instead. But no. There is no email waiting in either gmail account, nor is hotmail showing any news. Whoever it is, they have not left me a message anywhere.

Which means that it is not the publishing company I applied to for a job last week. It is not somebody wanting my services as a seamstress, giving me the cash to survive this month in a little more comfort. Nobody was actually desperate to contact me. And suddenly, I feel unloved instead of anxious. Melancholy.

It's cold and grey outside today. Meteorologists are forecasting fog overnight. And I'm surrounded by the over-warm fug of central heating, struggling to stay awake. I wish the call had come a few minutes earlier, a few minutes later, when I was sitting beside the phone. Anything to relieve the dull routine, the frustration of unsatisfied curiosity.

Update: I have identified my mystery caller. It was no mystery. It was the mobile phone carrier that I left earlier this year, attempting to win my custom back. They called again this afternoon, having called twice yesterday as well. I almost wish I'd never found out.

The Winter Coat

Winter is definitely upon us. The days are noticeably shorter, with stick figure shadows like children’s drawings attached to our feet by lunchtime. The trees shrugged off their leaves over the course of a couple of days last week, leaving a treacherous, slippery sludge on footpaths after it rained on Friday. Until the rain it looked pretty, tempting me into turning into a six year old again and kicking my way through the drifts for the joy of the sound and colour. I didn’t, but only because, in the grown up land I inhabit, I was perpetually rushing around, always late for whatever my next appointment was.

I had to dig out my longer winter coat today as well. The knee length black number that I bought with the winnings of my one and only soccer bet. Thank you, Tim Cahill, for keeping me warm for three years by being the first to score against Arsenal way back in 2006. I was looking the coat over before putting it on this morning and I noticed that the elbows are looking decidedly worn. I don’t think it’s going to see me through another winter after this. It will be added to the list of things I will be leaving behind when I leave London. And I’ll miss it; it features prominently in my winter travel photos, the few occasions that I have let myself appear in them. There I am, wrapped up against the cold with varying hats, gloves, scarves, and my trusty black, double-breasted, knee-length coat, always looking more stylish than any other coat I’ve managed to find. With the coat will vanish something of my self image.

Of course it saw less wear last winter than before. The second round of Heathrow injection kicked in to make it a little too snug to wear with enough layers underneath it. This year it seems to be more snug, but I’m fairly certain that it’s just me. If it was really any more snug than it was last year, the bottom button wouldn’t do up, rather than just straining ever so slightly. But whatever its fit, whatever the reason, it is gradually inching closer to the charity shop haul at the end of my London life.

It sounds like I have written that as a metaphor for my London life; it’s really not. It’s just an ode to a coat that has seen me through a lot. I could write a similar tribute to my boots, but they can’t handle the pace and need to be re-heeled at the beginning of every winter. The coat, in contrast, something that never truly gets packed away in a place like London, just needs a quick brush and it’s ready for service. It might be poetic to link living in London with a tired, worn out piece of clothing that no longer fits me properly. Hell, I’d think I was pretty darned clever if I could do that and make it work. But at the end of the day? It’s just a coat. There’s a new one in a shop out there waiting for me to have the right combination of time and money to find it. At the moment, it’s going to be waiting until kingdom come, but I know it’s out there somewhere. I just need to get off my butt and find it. In the mean time, my old faithful will have to serve. And do it well, given that we’re headed into the first week of temperature not reaching double figures this week.

I can’t tell if it’s the beginning of Christmas, or then end of the year. Either way, there is a touch of melancholy to the season for me. It’s my last full year in London, my last northern hemisphere winter. There are reasons to look back and reasons to look forward. I think I’ll focus on the forward, today.

A strongly worded blog of complaint

It always amazes me just how many people out there have absolutely no awareness of how they impact on other people's lives and comfort. I think, living in a fairly large western city, there are few things that can drive you insane quicker than someone with their head firmly planted in the clouds and no concept of your tutting behind them. The person who dawdles up the middle of a busy footpath. The one who re-heats the pungent leftovers in the office kitchen. The loud, raucous horde of teenagers anywhere.

Today's offender was on the tube. She shoved her way into the carriage behind me, in a gross violation of personal space that saw her with her nose pressed against my back for two stops, at which point she made a mad dash for the aisle. Of course, when seating became free, I ended up with her next to me. And on top of me, as it happened, because she was also one of those people who feel it is necessary to not only lean all the way over the armrest (in my opinion, there not for the support of one's arm, but rather to keep one's neighbour at a suitable distance) but also to open their newspaper in a manner which Basil Fawlty would find understated. So, with my book approximately two inches from my nose, and someone else's elbow firmly planted in my side, I was pressed up against the - it has to be noted, out of fairness - rather attractive chap beside me on the other side. So it was that the excess of bodily contact was shared through the entire carriage. Some say the effect of a butterfly flapping its wings can trigger and earthquake. I would ask what the effect of a short round woman ruffling a newspaper would be, in such terms. 

Of course, I have now been here so long, come to act so much like a local, that I don't voice my annoyance with these people. Admittedly, on occasion I have felt it necessary to mutter to whoever was lucky enough to be my companion that day - often days when I have spoken to someone back in Melbourne, when my Australian-ness is at its peak. On a particularly bad day, I might ask the offender if they mind or tell them by all means to take up the entire entryway. But most of the time, I simply act like I did today, when no amount of squirming, wriggling, or exasperated sighing could draw the offenders attention to their transgression. 

I think it's time that something was done. These people must be told, once and for all, that it is unacceptable for them to have a conversation in the doorway of a shop. That one doesn't simply stop and change direction when walking along the street. Action must be taken, for the sake of society at large. Anyone volunteering to do it, then? No? Tut, thought as much.

Bitch and Moan

I should blog. I ought to blog. There should be plenty for me to write about. I am, after all, on leave from work and in a city with so much to offer that I could never tire of it. That's all true, it is. I'm a single girl, with plenty of friends she can call on and no ties to hold her back.

Except that I do have ties. They may not have held me back today, but they're still there. Of course, they're not an excuse I could possibly use for the fact that I'm in the process of following up my busy day of housework with an equally busy day of sitting on my butt. Nor do they excuse the way I've been wondering all day what modern housewives without kids get up to all day - how the hell do they fill their time, given that there's only so much you can give to vacuuming, mopping, washing clothes and dishes, and I've done it all in one day? But they do offer something to explain me using one of my much loved leave days in cleaning the flat (it was my turn, really, given that I hadn't done any housework since before I went home for two weeks. Or even further back, since before I went to Norway).

And it's a much repeated refrain for me. I'm broke. Again. And it's only the middle of the month. My ever shrinking pay packet has shrunk to the point where it doesn't even see me through the first half of the month anymore. In the three years and one day that I've lived in London, I've managed to go backwards. Not just a little backwards; that could be understood, given the amount of travel I do. No, I've raced back to be where I was at before I finished uni. The first time around. In 2001.

But I'm still somehow better off than some. I at least appreciate the opportunities that are out there, and grab them when I can. L announced the other day that she doesn't think she's going to get through her to-do list because she has too much to do at work. I felt like slapping her. Here am I, trying desperately to figure out a way to get to tick off just one more thing on my list but knowing that unless my trend is reversed in a hurry it's not going to happen. There she is, in a secure job that is paid roughly three times better than me - and that's base rate, without allowing for all the extra hours she does - won't get through her want-list because of work? What did she move to the UK for, then? To work? She doesn't understand why it makes me so angry to see her wasting her chances. Clearly, she doesn't empathise with the sense of powerless fury that overtakes me when I hear such a pathetic excuse for putting off your life. If I was in her situation, there's a good chance I'd still be broke. But what a beautiful time I'd be having in the meantime.

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night
But ah my foes and oh my friends
It gives a lovely light.
Edna St Vincent Millay

He who tires of London

I've spent the last couple of days as a London tourist and it's brought home a few things to me. One is the obvious one; I love London, but I hate tourists. I know, I am technically a tourist myself, especially as I stroll around town with L and her guidebook. But I like to think I'm not the sort of tourist who stops in the middle of a crowded footpath to study their map, who stands aimlessly in the best viewing angle of any major attraction, helpfully blocking everyone else's photo opportunity. I like to think that I'm considerate and don't make a mess of the place for other people. That's what I tell myself, anyway, even as I do the kind of stop-and-spin maneuver outside the Tate that drives me insane on Oxford St. 

But I do love London in all its gobsmackingly beautiful corners, its stories, the fact that so many people have lived here and left their mark on the world. We found the street my ancestors lived in in Shoreditch today, on our way to a museum. It's a quaint old street full of warehouses, underneath an overhead train line. I'm pretty sure the train line was put through after my ancestors had made the mad dash for the Victorian goldfields, however, so it wasn't entirely the same. Other addresses I have for other ancestors were helpfully obliterated by the Luftwaffe, like so much of London.

Which brings me to something else I began to appreciate more today; London is old. Luftwaffe, yeah, not that long ago, in the grand scheme of things. The Victorian era building I live in? Also, not terribly old, but getting closer. The oldest shop in London, still trading, built in the sixteenth century, during the reign of Elizabeth I? Yeah, now we're talking. Hidden gems are everywhere in London. And most of the time, you'd never know they were there. I love taking the time to either wander for myself, or do a walking tour and be shown these tidbits, the remnants of a different city. There's something to be said for the first time you turn a corner and find a building that was old before your ancestors were shipped out of their homeland to a new social experiment on the other side of the world. The shock of the distance they travelled and the space they found when they got there must have almost killed them. 

Because for all its grandeur, London is not big. My feet are telling me otherwise at the moment, but I have essentially walked the length of London today, in a not very direct line, then headed back to the centre. From London Bridge to Shoreditch, then back into the centre for Covent Garden and Holborn. That's just today. Yesterday was the circuitous rambles around Hampstead Heath and Highgate cemetery. I've found corners of London that I never saw before. For all that it isn't big geographically, the denseness of the place means that you can never see it all. I doubt anyone ever does get to know every inch it, except perhaps the cabbies who have 'the knowledge'.

I almost envy them the years they spend exploring and memorising the nooks and crannies of the city. It must be an amazing experience to know so much. No wonder there are some who double as tour guides. One day, I'll test them out for myself. Until then, though, I've got to get back to plotting where I'll walk my legs off (hopefully literally, if I keep this up) on tomorrow's outing. Samuel Johnson was right, afterall: When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.

Dark days ahead

Today was the first of the grey days for the season - or the first that I've seen, anyway. It really brought home that winter is just around the corner. And, even knowing that it will be my last northern hemisphere winter, I'm not sure how I'll handle it. Because the thought of darkness before 4 in the afternoon is perhaps one of the more miserable thoughts that today brought into my head.

Of course, there are benefits to winter. There is no other season so friendly to the chubby girl, as everyone else bundles up in layers of clothing that go some way to evening out the imbalances in stature. There are the boots, coats, scarves and hats, at least one item of which I never felt the necessity for wearing until I got over here. In fact, I remember a few years where I didn't even own a winter coat. I went an entire winter at school without even owning a jumper to wear with my uniform (you think Melbourne doesn't get cold? Try getting through a Melbourne winter wearing only the thinnest of see-through lemon yellow shirts, a white t-shirt, a school blazer and skirt. It was even worse because that was the year it was cool to wear knee-hi socks instead of the official baby-poo brown tights). I could never manage that here. It's hard enough to make it through summer without a jumper.

But whatever else living here has done for me, I now have a profound appreciation for Melbourne's weather. Often maligned by other Australians because of the supposed grey and rain, I never had as much of a problem with it as interstaters did. Like many Melburnians, I secretly enjoyed the changing of the seasons; perhaps it wasn't necessary to go through quite so many changes in a single day, but the definition of the seasons and the separate activities and wardrobes that went with them always had an appeal. Here in London, there is less definition. What there is can be found in the different light levels rather than in the weather. Yes, it gets colder in winter, but it's such a gradual drift from the "warmth" of summer that it's hard to tell where one season ends and another begins. It's only the shortening of the days that brings home just how late in the year it is.

Next week sees the end of daylight savings, bringing with it darkness before 6. It won't be long before I'm leaving work in the dark. On Fridays. When I finish at 4:30. How people survive in places with almost continual darkness around Christmas I can't even begin to fathom. I'm sure I'm still recovering from depression after spending a week in the semi-darkness of Finland last Christmas. So roll on winter, do you worst. Then surrender to the sun and bring on the summer. Please.